OnePlus 6 Arrives May 22, Will Start at $529
OnePlus announced its latest flagship smartphone today, and as expected, the OnePlus 6 features a near bezel-less display with a notch.
“With the OnePlus 6, we focused on one thing above all else,” OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei said during the device’s launch event today in London. “Speed. This is the fastest flagship experience that OnePlus has ever created.”
Also as expected, the OnePlus 6 delivers flagship-level specs and then some at very affordable prices, in keeping with the company’s strategy. It utilizes a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, Adreno 630 graphics, 6 or 8 GB of RAM and 64, 128, or 256 GB of storage depending on the model, and a Sony dual-camera system with both OIS and EIS and f/1.7 apertures. The device supports 40 global bands of cellular connectivity, NFC, Bluetooth 5.0, and it comes with both fingerprint and facial unlocking functionality. There’s no wireless charging, but it supports fast charging like previous OnePlus handsets. Yes, it also has a headphone jack.
But the biggest news, in many ways, is the display: The OnePlus 6 features a 6.28-inch “full optic” 2280 x 1080 AMOLED screen at a tall 19:9 aspect ratio. This is OnePlus’s largest display yet, Pei noted, but the phone itself is no bigger than its predecessor, the 5T, thanks to the edge-to-edge design. And because you can remove the on-screen navigation bar and use gestures instead, you can gain even more usable space.
Pei defended OnePlus’s use of an iPhone X-like notch, which intrudes into the middle top of the display by noting that this design provides as much screen as possible without compromising on the functionality that users expect.
The OnePlus 6 will be available in three colors—Mirror Black, Midnight Black, and Silk White—and in various configurations that range from 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage for $529 to a high-end model with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage for $629. To put this pricing in perspective, an iPhone X with 64 GB costs $999, while a Samsung Galaxy S9+ with 64 GB of storage costs $840.
The OnePlus 6 will be available for purchase on May 22. And yes, I will be reviewing it.